Essay Online

I am simply amazed at the problems some of my colleagues are experiencing regarding writing job proposals for customers. So often I hear that there has been some sort of disagreement between client and service provider, something that can and should be avoided before a project is started. Here are four tips to help you write an effective job proposal letter.

Assume Nothing My junior high English teacher gave his students the real meaning of assume: if you assume something it makes an ass out of you and me: ass-u-me. Leave nothing to chance. When you speak with a client do not assume they understand much of what you have to offer. For instance, I sell website packages. I have learned to spell out everything that I will offer to my customers for a very specific price. If there are any “gray areas” I protect myself by telling customers that certain other expenses will be billed separately. Do not box yourself into a corner and do not pull surprises on your customers as they may think you are trying to cheat them. Keep the lines of communication wide open.

Get It In Writing Save all of your email correspondence with clients including emails you send and emails you receive. Sometimes what is not said verbally is articulated in writing. For example, I write much better than I speak, therefore I am more likely to put my ideas forth via “ink” or “type” than I am to verbalize them. In either case follow up your contact by placing everything in writing. You will need that paper trail in case something goes wrong e.g., a refusal to pay for services rendered.

Make Changes, If Necessary Sometimes projects change as the work goes forward. If it is a minor change, such as cropping a few extra photographs, you can probably “eat” the additional labor. However, if your project increases in size, let’s say your clients now want a 12 page website instead of an 8 page site, they need to know that you need to be compensated for the extra work. Specify in your proposal letter that any changes to the project will incur additional charges; remind them of this “clause” should any major change be proposed. Your customer may decide not to go with the larger project after counting the additional costs.

Write a Contract I have done fairly well without contracts. Many of my customers know me quite well, therefore the proposal letter serves as a contract of sorts. I also require my customers to pay me 50% as an advancement; if they walk away from the contract upon completion of my work their website does not get uploaded to the internet. At the very least I have partial compensation for my hard work. Your experience or risk factors may be much different than mine; certainly use contracts if your customers are not well known to you or you do not have a previous business relationship.

In summation, every satisfied customer is a potential referral for new business. Keep those communication lines open and understood and you will garner additional projects because of your sound business practices.

(c)2005; Matthew C Keegan, LLC

You visit a car dealership. Not more than three steps inside the door, a smiling guy in a suit gets in your face. He is using every hard closing sales tactic in the book, relentlessly pursuing you around the showroom and the lot.

This guy could not be more clear, he wants to sell you a car, and he does not mind you knowing it. And yet, we hate this guy. We want people to put our needs and comfort levels first, and those who do are the people we reward with the sale.

Are those friendly people any less interested in making the sale than the obnoxious car salesman? Or are they just less transparent about how they go about it? Do we care if they are being genuine, or do we just need to feel as if they are?

Picture this: You are introduced to some loud-mouthed young marketing consultant at a party. He is half-tanked, cursing like a sailor, and insulting every third person who passes by, all while trying to convince you to hire him. He even insults you and your wife a couple of times in lame attempts at humor. Is he not just keeping it real?

On the other hand, I once read a story about a businessman who everyone loved. This guy kept everyone in stitches with his jokes, and yet he always took the time to listen attentively when others spoke. In short, he made everyone feel good, and he was hugely successful in business because of it.

The story was told by a close friend of his, who revealed that the guy actually had no sense of humor at all. He just repeated jokes that he heard others tell, even though he did not get why they were funny. Further, the mans compassionate listening abilities were simply a learned behavior. He knew how to make people feel good, but he never cared at all what people said or thought. He just wanted to be viewed as a person who cared, because it was good for business.

When it comes to copywriting and conversational marketing, it is all about how you say it, combined with a strategic decision as to what to say so that you can meet your goals. You are trying to create an experience that others respond to favorably, just like you would in person. Think about the last great conversation you had with an engaging person. How did it make you feel?

Where do we draw the line with transparency and authenticity? What if no one likes the real you?

For more details and my inspiration for this article you can visit my site mentioned in the Author field.

(Transcript of live interview, December 2008)

Juanita Watson, host: … today, I have on the program, Fred and Kim Goldman, the father and sister of Ron Goldman who was tragically murdered along with Nicole Brown Simpson in Brentwood CA in June of 1994.

In 2006, HarperCollins announced the publication of a book in which O.J. Simpson told how he hypothetically would have committed the murders. In response to public outrage that Simpson stood to profit from these crimes, HarperCollins canceled the book. A Florida bankruptcy court awarded the rights to the Goldmans in August 2007 to partially satisfy the unpaid civil judgment, which has risen, with interest, to over $38 million.

Amidst much controversy and criticism, The Goldman family has recently published “If I Did It; Confessions of the Killer,” which they view as O.J.’s confession, and has worked hard to ensure that the public will read this book and learn the truth. This book is the original manuscript approved by O.J. Simpson, with up to 14,000 words of key additional commentary.

I’m very happy to have the Goldman’s on the show today, to talk about the journey they have been on to get the rights to this book, the confusion that has been created in the media around their story, and recent events that have OJ back in the spotlight.

Juanita: … So walk us through that; how you ended up with the rights to this book.

Fred: Well, first of all if we had it to again today, we would do the exact same thing. We spoke out against the book for several reasons. One, we wanted to stop him from making money on the murders of Ron and Nicole, and two, we were concerned as to what the contents of the book were, fearful that it might be the equivalent of a how to manual. Ultimately, we learned that he had already been paid close to $700,000 and was expecting more. He had another $300,000 coming as an advance. So unfortunately, he had already been paid. Additionally, once we were able to acquire a copy of the manuscript, we discovered that no, it wasn’t a manual on how to commit murder, but it’s a read that once you go through it, you have very little reason to believe that it was an admission of guilt, a confession. And we levied down the right on the book in order to prevent him from ever gaining any additional money, and in doing so, we ultimately because he and his kids who had formed a fraudulent company, formed a company to move the money from Harper Collins to the killer to avoid the judgment. And in doing so, they ultimately filed bankruptcy of that company in order to avoid, to stop us from getting the rights to the book. And it is through bankruptcy that the rights were awarded to us because the asset, the rights, had to be turned into money according to the bankruptcy court. And the bankruptcy court gave us the option to be involved in that. We chose to do that because we knew that there was a very good chance that the rights could ultimately have gone back to the killer, and we would have right back to square one. So we got involved and promised the court that we would do everything we could to monetize that asset.

Juanita: I’d like to know both of your reactions upon reading the book for the first time and going through, especially where he is talking that confrontation in the courtyard with Nicole and Ron. What were your reactions to reading this for the first time?

Fred: Well, for me if I can, I started it several times and had a hard time getting into it, but finally, I found it very disturbing, very disturbing because I realized that I was reading the words of the monster that murdered my son. And needless to say by the time we got to the specific chapter in which he talks about murdering Ron and Nicole, that was a real struggle for me and very painful. It was painful for the obvious reasons and it was additionally painful for me to listen to him review if you would how he taunted Ron and how he made fun of Ron. This man is a monster, a piece of trash, calling him a murderer isn’t enough.

Kim: I don’t know. I don’t know that I have much more to add. I think the first time I read it or I skimmed it, I was looking to see if there was anything descriptive in there. Because all the criticism was that we were publishing a murder manual. And then when I finally sat down in the quiet of my own state, I was incredibly moved by that paragraph, I mean by that chapter. For me, it didn’t deviate from the criminal case. I already knew the information, but hearing the killer sort of recount all of the emotion from that night and all of the excitement and I don’t mean that in a positive way, obviously, but like all of the energy that was happening, that was difficult for me because I’ve always wondered about those last couple of minutes of Ron’s life.

Juanita: How close to the truth do you feel that that text and that recollection is? Do you believe that that is pretty close to the truth?

Kim: I do. You know the only thing that was new information for me was the dog that was wagging his tail. You know, I guess it comes down to this for me at the end of the day. An innocent person wouldn’t write a book like this. An innocent person wouldn’t sit down and write a hypothetical about how he would have killed the mother of his children, an innocent person. So I walked into it believing that he was confessing, so everything that I read, I came from the mindset that it was pretty damn close to what happened that night. But for me I’m reading it from a place that this is his confession and I’m going to take what he is saying is the truth.

Fred: And additionally, I think it’s important to recognize that he does not contradict virtually any evidence at all. As a matter of fact, he in some ways explains things that were unknown. He makes a point of commenting on the route that he took back to his home from Nicole’s. And that’s how some thought it was one way. He’s going to clarify. He told you exactly how he drove home. Additionally, I think for me his commentary about being covered in blood and that at some point, he took off his clothes before getting into his car. He took off his outerwear and bundled it all together, which for me would explain why in fact, there wasn’t even more blood in the car. He is so arrogant that he ultimately ends of telling you virtually everything because quote un quote “he knows better than anyone” and he wants to be sure that you know that.

Juanita: … Did you have any other hopes for having this book on the shelves?

Kim: I think I know that my father and I feel very strongly about this is, you know most of the book is written about how his relationship was with Nicole and how abusive that relationship is, and so if there is an opportunity for a woman to read it and identify herself with Nicole and then someway have the courage and strength to get out of that relationship, then you know we’ve done a good thing. And I think I hope that people walk away with some hope in that regard if in fact they are in that situation. My father and I also added a victim’s resource section to this book, and we also are donating a portion of the proceeds to the Ron Goldman Foundation of Justice so we can help other victims of crimes sort of navigate themselves through this horrific process.

Juanita: So, how can listeners find out more about the Ron Goldman Foundation? Do you have a website?

Kim: RonGoldmanFoundation dot org … it’s in two stages … my father and I over the last 13 years have been volunteering our time to speak out on behalf of victim’’ rights and this is the first time from a financial position to try to contribute and help in some ways. So we have some ideas of how we want to further assist and I think it’s more partnering with the other organizations that are doing such amazing work on behalf of victims’ rights.

Juanita: What are the families that you have talked to that have read this book that you know have had family members in domestic abuse situations. What are their comments on this story and the point of view of an abuser?

Kim: We’ve had an enormous amount of email coming into the website. Again, once people understood our reasoning for doing it, people were very supportive. I had one woman in particular tell me that she appreciated that we were courageous enough to do this because it takes courage to fight your assailant no matter what if you’re in an abusive relationship or if you’re in this kind of situation, the courage it takes to do that, and she appreciated it because it reminded her of the courage it took her to leave her abusive husband … I think that unless you have walked in our shoes, you can’t completely embrace the struggle, and I don’t fault anybody for that, but that’s just, you know this is a commitment that we have made and this is a necessary thing that we for us to be doing to ensure that he’s held accountable.

Juanita: … I just wanted to let you both share any final thoughts that you would like to before we end today.

Fred: I think the only thing that’s important to always remember is that we would like to see a justice system that cares more about the victims in this country than it does about the criminals and the accused. And unfortunately right now, the term criminal justice system seems to very clearly define the system. Perhaps if it was called the victims’ justice system and clearly was more concerned about victims, we’d all be in a better as a country. Victims in this country account for enormous toll, enormous toll on our society, both physically and financially, and a system that works hard to ensure that violent people are put back out on the street is not the kind of system that I think most people in this country would like. So, as people get involved in the pain or reading about the kind of trauma that occurs from violent crime, hopefully they will begin to speak out as do victims already in this country to ultimately end up with a system that’s there for the vast majority of us instead of the few that commit all the crimes.

Kim: I also want to add specifically as it relates to this specific book that I hope that the next time someone goes to shake his hand or get an autograph from him that they are reminded that those are the hands that killed two people. And I hope that our efforts and the efforts of this country to ensure that justice prevails that he is pushed into a state of exile and you know and that he just sort of falls by the wayside. That would be fantastic for us.

Juanita: Wonderful, final thoughts. Thank you so much for talking to us today. Much sympathy for your loss and we certainly support you and your endeavors for victims of crimes. Thank you so much for your time today Fred and Kim.

Every writer dreams of the day when they can profit from their writing. While income opportunities abound for writers each method has drawbacks.

Newspaper and magazine reporters can make a good living but their subject matter is often closely regulated and directed. Corporate writing can be even more lucrative but even more tightly controlled. Freelance writing offers more freedom but is also more uncertain. Publishing books is even more uncertain. So what is a writer to do?

Forget all those old-school writing methods and focus on the internet. Don’t write for anyone but yourself. You really can profit from writing only about what interests you. Don’t worry about the market or the editors. Write for yourself. Not only will it be more fun and rewarding for your soul but for your checking account as well.

I am going to share an easy (and cheap) 5-step formula that can help you start your own writing business today, but first I want to share one important fact.

This is not a get-rich quick scheme. It will take some time to earn, perhaps as long as three months to begin turning a profit, but if you keep working at it you should see your income grow exponentially each month and you should be able to count on that income and know what you have to do to increase it. You will have total control over your income and that is very powerful.

1. Create a blog account at one of the free blogging sites available online (we used to use Blogger.com but there are many other good options). This will serve as your internet base. It really is the cheapest and easiest way to get online today. Yes, you could create a free web site at one of the many available but blogs are more attractive to the search engines. Plus they offer you the ability to personalize it but most of your energy will be spent on content which is the king of the internet and the real reason you want an internet presence.

2. Now sign up for a free ClickBank affiliate acccount which will give you immediate access to something to sell.

3. Sign up for a contextual or pay-per-click advertiser such as Google, Yahoo, Revenue Pilot, or SearchFeed and you’ll start earning from visitors as well as customers.

4. Develop your blog. Make 10 your immediate goal then work your way up to 25, 50 and 100 and so on. Your entries can be your opinions, thoughts, or ramblings; poems or short stories; or articles.

5. Promote your blog through article marketing, link development and submitting your blog feed. I would suggest your primarily focus on article marketing as if offers the ability to not only develop links but also delivers traffic plus as a writer it is easy for you to create articles or use a selection of the material you’ve already created for your blog.

Yes, it really is that simple and while you can later grow by buying your own domain name (or names) and publishing your blog on your own site you do not need (and likely should avoid) investing money in expensive tools

Getting started on the web can be free (as you see above) or inexpensive if you concentrate on what you really need. The simple truth is that you don’t need a lot of fancy, expensive tools and programs. In the long run a domain name is a good investment. A domain name will cost you between $5 and $10 a year depending on whether you go .com or .info (or one of the many other options available). You don’t need to find a web host or create a site. Simply point the domain at your blog for now and continue with the development and promotion of your blog. The advantage of owning your own domain name is simply that later when you have the money, time, and knowledge to develop your web site that domain name will already exist and have filtered through the search engines. It also offers some marketing advantages that a free blog cannot.

At some point you may decide you want more flexibility and control than a free blog can offer and that is when you will want to run your own site. You can find a good web host for as little as $5 a month and shouldn’t pay more than $20 a month for a reputable host that offers all the tools and utilities you might need for your current site–including blog software. Maybe down the line you’ll need to upgrade but by then you’ll know your income and your needs.

Really the only other regular expense that you might consider to make your internet business complete would be a mailing list tool. You can do this for just $20 a month and it will be worth every penny for sales, customer service, and promotion. But this is not necessary to start out and you may decide that it isn’t important to your efforts so you can skip it entirely.

Once you have your blog set up and monetized (by offering ClickBank products, advertising, and/or selling text links) then you are in a position to begin profiting from your writing. The way to profit it to increase your traffic so you need to get serious about your article marketing efforts because each article you distribute will generate immediate traffic and create back links for search engine optimization. Also you need to continue to grow your blog by adding fresh content regularly. This will create repeat visitors as well as bring the search engines back again and again. Simply publishing new articles and new blog entries each week will increase your traffic. The more articles and entries you create — the more traffic you will generate.

Once you have found your rhythm with your existing blog you may well decide to branch out and create a second blog on a different or related topic. Now you should be able to work even faster because you are more experienced but likely more motivated as well because you can see just how rewarding it can be to write for fun and profit.

Every once in a while a writer comes along that demands we take notice; one that avails just the right meter, tempo, and rhythm; one that can engulf us in a story and keep us glued throughout 200 pages; one that offers a style sure to be emulated by his aspiring peers, both of his generation and generations to come.

Nelson Pahl is just that writer.

With simultaneous debut releases, entitled Bee Balms & Burgundy and Two for Tuesday, Pahl flexes a literary muscle short in supply today&ndashone that whispers, “legend in the making.”

Although the hardcover version of Bee Balms & Burgundy won’t hit stores until March, I had the pleasure of reading the pre-release, limited edition eBook version, which is available at .NelsonPahl.com and .IndieMill.com. There, you can even read a sample chapter, to whet your appetite.

Bee Balms & Burgundy is a charming story of latent lifelong love and the quest to conquer all that stands in its way. Nick May is a successful thirty-two-year-old entrepreneur living in Vancouver. He breaks off an explosive, distrusting eleven-month live-in relationship just before he travels home to St. Paul to see his widowed mother. The relationship leaves him cynical about love, to say the least. Once in St. Paul, he discovers next-door neighbor and lifelong pal Mia Lawson, 30, has a couple secrets she’s been dying to share with him. One, unbeknownst to Nick, is that she’s now a post-mastectomy breast cancer survivor, still hoping to conquer her disease. The second secret levels Nick even more.

Pahl not only delves into the oft-taboo topic of breast cancer with literary vigor, but he also revels in it, astutely capturing the female emotions attached to such a dreadful experience. The chemistry between his two main characters borders on the divine, as we ride along upon an always charming but sometimes heartbreaking chariot through Nicky and Mia’s sensual and ethereal yet trying world.

While Indie Nation Magazine bills the book as “…the best love story you’ll read this year,” I beg to differ, slightly; I’ll argue that it might be the best love story you ever read. Bee Balms courageously delves into a subject today’s “socially conscious” novelists won’t go near, and it treats the topic with grace, dignity, depth, and, yes, even endearing sensuality.

Pahl is a wonderful example of why some of America’s best writers now insist on writing for independent presses: A major publishing house would only shackle his rich and witty writing style and subdue his “outside-the-box” storytelling.

Yet, Pahl’s strict and uncommon literary discipline&ndashalong with his hand for sensuous descriptive writing and well-crafted dialogue&ndashmake him one of the very best writers in today’s fiction scene, indie lit or mainstream. His concise and fluid prose grip the reader from the onset, and then move him or her through the story with liberating ease and optimum intrigue. Through his articulate and warm first-person narrative, we see, feel, hear, smell, and taste everything; we live inside his fictional world; we are the characters.

Nelson Pahl’s writing style single-handedly restores my faith in today’s literature. Consider Bee Balms & Burgundy an essential inclusion to any A-list catalogue.

And, do yourself a favor: Say you read him before the world knew about him&ndashor, before he wins a Pulitzer.

The benefits of journal writing are fairly well established due to the long history of journal writing. From Anne Frank to Di Vinci, journal writing has proven itself.

Benefits of Journal Writing

When considering the benefits of journal writing, it is important to set a few parameters. First, there is no age limit to using journals. There are distinct benefits for children of all ages, but journal writing is equally valuable to adults. The reason for this is journal writing is an act of personal reflection. Whether it is a teenager reflecting on the social nightmare of high school or an overworked parent taking twenty minutes a night to write is irrelevant. The point is, all age groups benefit from stepping back from their life for a few moments and reflecting on things.

Whether you recognize it or not, journal writing provides you with an anchor in your daily life. In the journal, you are free to write what you want without restrictions, to truly address the issues in your life without fear of criticism. Put another way, one of the benefits of journal writing is it acts as a self-help psychiatrist, but for MUCH cheaper!

As you write in your journal over time, you’ll also start to ascertain a second benefit to doing so. This benefit is one of self-criticism. Inevitably, you’ll read through past entries and review your life. Doing so will lead you to self-reflection as well as thoughts on how you might act differently should certain situations rise again.

Of equal importance, journal writing has health benefits. Before you click away from this article, consider a time in your life when you were extremely frustrated. Hopefully, you spoke to a friend to “get things off your chest.” Didn’t you feel a lot better afterwards? Getting things off your chest helps relieve stress, one of the biggest killers in our modern society. Journal writing acts in much the same way since you are able to write your thoughts without fear of criticism.

There are other benefits to journal writing, but all boil down to one simple fact. Writing in a journal allows you to express yourself without being judged. With the lack of privacy in our modern, digital world, that is hardly a small benefit.

OVERVIEW

In your User Documentation, you direct your Reader to perform tasks with your product. If you don’t tell your Reader what to expect when performing those tasks, you will have a baffled Reader, resulting in dissatisfaction and expensive calls to technical support.

EXAMPLE: REVERSE OSMOSIS WATER FILTER

I bought and installed a Reverse Osmosis water filter. The instructions told me to fill, and then empty (the instructions foolishly used the term “dump,” which would have caused the destruction of the system) the tank.

The filter had a capacity of about 100 gallons per day. Thus I expected the initial fill (4.5 gallon tank) to take less than one hour. After about an hour the tank was still filling. Worried, I called the technical support. I was told that it takes about two hours for the tank to fill.

One line in the User Documentation would have eliminated that call: “The tank initially takes 2 hours to fill.” Not knowing what to expect I, and perhaps other Users, wasted the time and money to call the technical support line.

EXAMPLE: UPGRADING A ROUTER’S SOFTWARE

I had some problems with my Cable/DSL (Internet-Ethernet) router. The internal control panel made it easy to check for and download updates to the internal software. The system told me that it would take a few minutes to check for updates (good), but it did not tell me how long the update would take to perform once I downloaded the file.

Not telling the User what to expect in terms of time is a mistake. I started the update and after a few minutes of operation (was it working?) I canceled the process. I re-started it again, and decided to wait longer to see what happened. It took a few minutes longer, and successfully completed.

It would only take a simple phrase such as “the software update can take up to five minutes to complete” to reduce the User’s anxiety.

PROGRESS INDICATORS (as displayed in a windowing environment) are often useless. Some go beyond 100%, others are logarithmic: they move quickly in the early processing and wait, seemingly at the end, for a long time while processing is completing. Consider making progress indicators relate to the time of operation, not number of files.

Some progress/activity indicators have nothing to do with the program they are associated with. I have used virus checkers that have abnormally terminated, yet the activity indicator kept on moving. Make sure that progress/activity indicators do reflect activity of the associated program.

FILE DOWNLOADS DO IT

Telling the User what to expect is not a new concept. If you have ever downloaded files, the download site will often tell how long the file will take to download, based upon your Internet connection.

EXAMPLE: YOUR PRODUCT’S INDICATORS

While most examples of “telling the User what to expect” deals with the time needed to complete an activity, others can be related to the indicators and performance of the product.

I have a small smart battery charger that has a red light for each of the battery positions. Unfortunately, the operation of these lights is impossible to understand, and there is no description of how they work.

Here’s what happens. When you first insert the battery, the light illuminates. A short while later (the charging still has many hours to go), the light goes off. Sometime toward the end of the charging cycle the light may go on again.

This is clearly confusing to the User. The User’s expectation is that when the light goes out, the charging is completed. This would result in a lot of User frustration, as Users would try to use “charged” batteries that were not charged. The developers of the battery charger should explain the operation of these displays.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Tell the Users what to expect as they use your product. Often this information is the amount of time it will take for an operation to complete. For other products, you may have to tell the User what the indicators mean.

Don’t leave your document Readers confused or left to figure things out on their own. Doing so will reduce your Users’ comfort with your product, and increase your technical support costs.